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RSSTulsa World
Jul. 14--This Friday, Tulsan Fred Emmer will step into the spotlight on national television.
But Emmer, director of existing business development for the Tulsa Metro Chamber, won't be acting. Instead, the entrepreneur will have eight minutes on the QVC shopping network to talk up the cat movie in which he and his business partner, local advertising pro Jeff Walderich, have invested close to $20,000 to create, produce and market.
Walderich will observe and take notes from the sidelines as Emmer hawks "Mewvie, The Motion Picture for Cats." Two different episodes -- "Backyard Buffet" and "Birdland Bonanza" -- feature short segments of scampering rodents, crawling bugs and chirping birds.
The target audience? Indoor cats who often spend hours alone and don't regularly get the stimulation and entertainment of the great out doors.
And for Mewvie's creators, those few moments on QVC could quickly change their lives.
"This has great potential to become a full-blown business," said Walderich, owner of Ideastudio Design Group.
The inspiration for Mewvie came after the longtime friends both noticed their family felines watching TV when the Animal Planet network was on.
Believing they had stumbled onto an interesting idea, they spent months filming in backyards and area parks with rented equipment, then tested 20 filmed scenes on 30 cat-owner families.
Early on, the men realized that cats were a pet niche just begging to be explored.
Cats have come to outnumber dogs as the No. 1 household pet, and veterinarians recommend that pet felines be kept indoors, Walderich said.
Spending on pets continues to rise, with more and more owners putting out big bucks for gourmet foods, clothing, spa treatments and toys, says the American Pet Product Manufacturing Association.
Emmer and Walderich also knew television was the ideal medium to market their product.
"We thought the informational setting would be the best way to get Mewvie known," Emmer said. "It's a demonstration product. It can't just sit on a shelf -- it needs to be viewed."
That's why the videos stopped pedestrian traffic at the 2004 Tulsa State Fair -- people couldn't resist stopping to watch, he said.
"Everyone kept saying, 'This is the most hilarious thing we've ever seen.' "
After rave reviews from customers at the fair, the next challenge was getting the movies to a mass audience. Emmer said he and Walderich simply applied to appear on QVC through the network's Web site.
QVC's demographics coincide with the product, he said. Most of the shopping network's viewers, 80 percent, are women, and 75 percent of cat owners are female.
After presenting Mewvie at an audition in St. Louis, the men's movie was chosen from more than 3,000 entries submitted to QVC earlier this year.
Emmer's appearance is part of the shopping network's annual Discoveries Tour, which highlights 10 entrepreneurs from 10 cities across the country starting this month.
Emmer's session is being broadcast from Portland Head Lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The 2005 Decade of Discoveries Tour will showcase 100 new products.
The Tulsa fair, some trade show appearances and word of mouth -- including a write-up in a reporter's column in an Akron, Ohio, newspaper and mentions in other papers -- have helped sell 3,000 of the videos, which are available in both DVD and VHS and priced at $19.95 for one and $29.95 for both.
They can be ordered online or can be found locally at Southern Agriculture locations and Cat Stuff, a specialty pet store.
The Mewvie segment will be broadcast between 1 and 3 p.m. here. QVC is shown in Tulsa on cable channel 18 for Cox Communications subscribers.
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L, COX,
